On paper, Freejack sounds like the perfect cyberpunk movie. The rich have their consciousness uploaded onto a server when they die. They then pull someone's body from the past into the future so they can download their consciousness into that body and continue living. The corporations are in control, there's a massive rich/poor divide, etc.
Yet in execution, I just find the movie boring. It might be due to Emilio Estevez always looking bored throughout the movie. Or maybe it's the costume design that's so bland. The poor areas have people with sufficiently dirty clothing but in the rich area, people are just wearing... clothes. For most of the movie, Emilio just wears a tan jacket. It's weird how the cars are crazy futuristic in the rich part of town yet everyone dresses like it's the early 90s (when the movie was made).
The movie almost could've been another Johnny Mnemonic given the plot. And yet, by losing the wacky over-the-top acting and designs of Johnny Mnemonic, Freejack just feels bland to me.
But maybe I'm being too harsh on it. It's streaming everywhere, so go see for yourself if you haven't watched it. Tubi, Freevee, Roku, Kanopy, Shout-TV
Bad acting and bad direction will result in a bad movie
Per Wikipedia:
According to reports at the time of the production and interviews with some members of the cast and crew, the original version of the movie had a disastrous test screening, so producer Ronald Shusett was brought in to re-shoot around 40% of the movie and add more character scenes and humor. Emilio Estevez also mentioned how director Geoff Murphy let them down by focusing too much on action in his original cut of the film. Geoff Murphy claims that there was interference from production company Morgan Creek and that he asked for his possessory credit to be removed.[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freejack#Production
I always liked it as a kid, but yeah, it's clearly a movie that had a lot of trouble and the results speak for themselves. It's a neat idea, at least.
100% one of the coolest ideas for a movie I remember seeing as a kid. I never really liked watching the majority of the movie, even on repeat watchings as a teen.
Reshooting 40% of the movie makes sense, but the concept of this movie was frequently in my imagination as a kid. A+ initial concept
Perhaps it was a already a washed up idea, but at the time, Freejack had a brilliant concept idea that totally hooked me at the beginning of the movie.
Then the movie seemed to have almost no special effects and to be set in a future that looked too much like the present and the cars and tanks didn't look amazing at all. Freejack was from 1992 and the world had already seen sci Fi marvels as Back to the Future Part 2 which, defects aside, really "looked like the future"
Still, the movie had a pretty good ending with the dead billionaire stalling the hero in order to capture his body and the main character's posing as such billionaire after having managed to screw with the takeover procedure (and making up the confirmation code), and making a mistake afterwards showing he knew how to drive (when the billionaire didn't)
It was a deeply flawed movie with terrible special effects, but it had an engaging premise and some smart ideas along the way.